It is known in the art that flowable products, for example beverages, shampoos, cosmetics etc can be conveniently packaged in flexible pouches. Usually these products are manufactured in large quantities of similar product and on a production line known as a form fill seal line. In this process the pouch is formed in a first part of the machine, filled at the next and then sealed, thus achieving a highly automated system. This system is very effective and is well suited to producing high volume runs of products. However, it is less effective when greater flexibility is needed, i.e. when more runs of lower volume are required, as the changeover time of the system from filling one product to another is very high. Thus a more flexible solution is needed whereby the pouches can be manufactured and sealed in one location and then filled in smaller batches at a second location. Such a system is provided in the CMF series of filling machines manufactured by Hensen Packaging Concept GmbH. This system goes some way to providing a solution by providing a machine that fills ready formed bags. This design loads empty bags with spouts already inserted onto a holding rail by way a linear array. Holding rails are loaded onto the machine and are vibrated to cause the pouches to feed along the holding rail towards the point of use. One major problem associated with these machines is that they do not have a high degree of automation as it is a relatively labour and time intensive operation to load the bags on the rails and to load the rails onto the machine in such a way that the machine can easily select the pouch to be filled.